I went to the dentist the other day and, as always, chose a magazine from the collection on the side table in the waiting area – Vogue, Elle Decoration, Good Housekeeping and others for example – to while away the minutes before the enforced time in ‘the chair’. I am pleased to see the magazines have returned …..

…… as during the uncertainty caused by Covid they were all assumed to be carriers of the virus, so disappeared. (Note 1) As I was sucking up the contents of Elle, as if I can’t buy the magazine myself somewhere, I got engrossed in a series of articles about individuals termed ‘creatives’. After some minutes I found an article about some pottery by the Israeli chef Ottolenghi, inspired by the Sicilian style. These days it’s easy to simply take a photo.

Returning home with a numb cheek, I found a supplier on line, ordered a vase and it was delivered two days later (Note 2). I sent a photograph to Celina’s best friend Mimi, looking for confirmation of my taste.

Fortunately she thought it was gorgeous and so I explained via WhatsApp how, looking at a magazine in a doctors’ surgery close to home in Battersea in 2009, I had seen a photograph of a chap sweating doing yoga. At the time I was doing Hatha yoga twice a week but it wasn’t hot enough to produce sweat. I had asked a neighbour if they knew what sort of yoga it was, she said I’ll take you and on 11^th March 2009 I joined 71 other individuals in a hot Balham studio for my first class of the Bikram series.

The ‘WhatsApp’ exchange continued:

“It seems so random ….. that you read an article in a random magazine and through that discovered a passion ……. and Celina (Note 3) ….. and moved to Hove and a change of life style.”

“C’est la vie!” (I was about to eat supper so didn’t want to engage right then in some philosophical debate, so this was a ‘hand-off’!)

“Really? Nothing more profound?” (Slightly incensed by my short repost?)

“More profound in a PC perhaps. But life can be extremely random!”

“Definitely a PC. I can understand ‘random’ about encounters and coincidences yes ….. but why one person reads or hears something then decides to follow up and someone doesn’t? Not sure why that happens ….  you could explore this  further?”

Well, that’s a nice challenge; where to start? Definitions maybe:

‘Random: made, done or happening without method or conscious decision.’

‘Fate: the development of events outside a person’s control, regarded as predetermined by a supernatural power.’

‘Coincidence: a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.’

So …… I made a conscious decision to buy an Ottolenghi vase, ergo it can’t be random. And if fate is determined by some supernatural power, count me out. I love coincidences and find them in so much of my life but this was no coincidence; I didn’t go looking for a vase! We generally learn our behaviour, understand how our actions have a reaction, how our behaviour is dictated by how we think and feel and how experiences can act as a brake or an accelerator to those actions.

The trouble is there is so much conflicting advice out there. For example, if you were hurt or had something go wrong because of your actions, you might be more cautious next time: “Once bitten twice shy” goes the ‘brake’ saying, whilst the ‘accelerator’ prompts one to act: ‘He who hesitates is lost’, one of the Christian Proverbs – proverbs 3verse 2. Conversely, ‘Fools rush in ….’ (note 3) doesn’t mean every time you make a quick decision you’re an idiot!! Of course a person who spends too much time deliberating about what to do often loses the chance to act altogether; booking tickets for some international star’s concert – any hesitation and they’re sold out!

One’s personal preferences play a part here. Although dismissed by some, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, based on Jungian principles, can offer a clue. It has four comparative preferences: Extraversion (E)/Introversion (I), Sensing (S)/Intuition (N), Thinking (T)/Feeling (F) and Judgement (J)/Perception (P). I register as ENTJ; an ‘N’ prefers the world of the future, of ideas, of possibilities. In addition someone who registers as a ‘J’ is quite decisive, whereas a ‘P’ wants more information, wants to do some research. So, I bought a vase, without buying a magazine entitled ‘What/Which Vase?’! An explanation of my decision perhaps?

One’s life is littered with ‘What If?’ choices; for instance, in 1985 I debated leaving the British Army after twenty years. What if I had stayed, where might my life have gone? No one will ever know and I am a firm believer we make such decisions …… and stick with them: regretting any decision is for the fairies. The fork in the path? Choose the road less travelled … or not?

Richard 31^st March 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Some ‘waiting areas’ have a wider assortment, obviously depending on the quality of the establishment, or not! For instance the gentlemen’s hairdresser in the exclusive Gavea Golf & Country Club in Rio de Janeiro’s Sāo Conrado suburb has a selection of magazines that cover interest in mansions costing millions of dollars, motor yachts that have ten cabins …… and the latest Playboy magazine!

Note 2 I had a Christmas gift of some money so it was good to choose something.

Note 3 Celina started practising hot yoga in September 2008. After over two and a half years of practising in the same classes, we agreed in September 2011 to have a meal somewhere. The rest is history.

Note 4 Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744) added ‘ ……where angels fear to tread’ to this proverb. He is well known for many other quotations, such as “To err is human: to forgive divine.”

I had promised Mo I would meet her in The Hope this week and so on Wednesday afternoon I popped in. Susie saw me and automatically started making a double espresso; being a regular anywhere has its advantages! I pulled up a chair at Mo’s table.

“Hi! Mo. Good to see you. You OK?”

A sort-of strangled “Yes” came out, as she had just put a large piece of a Brigadeiro into her mouth!

“I remember you saying that you had two twenty-something children. Did you see the column in the Sunday Times by Charlotte Ivers headlined ‘Over-forties! Your digital etiquette is appalling?’

She shook her head, wiping the chocolaty crumbs from her lips, and her look said, ‘tell me more’.

“I can only assume she has written the whole piece with her tongue firmly stuck into her cheek, but then I am over 40.”

“Me too!”

“She writes that there are only 3 circumstances when it is acceptable to call someone without prior warning: if you are married to them, if you are engaged to them or if someone has died. Never heard such nonsense! Alexander Bell would be turning in his grave. Surely if you want to talk to someone, dial their number. If it’s convenient, the recipient can answer the call; if not they won’t, although most seem obsessed about answering any call. If you don’t answer and it is important, they will try again!”

Mo showed me a flier that had been left on the tables:

“Come and chat! Every Thursday in April the Hope Café will be focusing on the art of conversation. Come in, have a tea or coffee and talk to someone.”

“What a great idea! It seems more and more people are living alone and rarely talk to anyone.”

“Don’t think you met Edith, Mo? Lovely elderly lady, a Kinder Transport child. Used to come in here regularly and was always up for a chat. Sadly she died towards the end of last year; but she was, I think, 89 or so.”

“Susie says Thursdays are going to be specifically for those who live on their own, who never normally talk to people. Loneliness, or social isolation for a modern description, can significantly increase a person’s risk of death, a risk on a par with those of smoking, obesity and physical inactivity. In extremis, it can take you down, and down, to a point when you fail to see any point in living.”

“Absolutely! Jenni Russell in her Times column suggested, inter alia, cafés’ reserving a table for those who are want to chat: a ‘talking table’! Now that’s a great idea and it sounds as though The Hope Café is right on the ball.

I think Susie said they are going to ask an aunt of hers to facilitate these ‘conversation days’, as some people are extremely shy and probably out of practice in talking to others.”

“What? Ensuring there’s no politics, no sex and no religion? Ha! Ha! You still watching the Couples Therapy series?”

“Yes, although when Cyn, as in Cyn & Yaya, talked about the abuse she had suffered as a child from her uncle and how this affected her relationships today, I wondered why she hadn’t tried to deal with it in one-on-one therapy and not bring it to the table of her relationship with Yaya. Incidentally had quite a lot of comments about my last PC on this programme, reinforcing how relationships define our lives. Orna talks about the need for both boundaries and space in relationships. My very first Hot Yoga teacher, Paul Dobson, writes that ‘….. committing to our relationships is a way to make space in our lives. Relationships are what open our hearts and spirits. So make space for a relationship and have space within it.’”

I roughed out a little diagram:

Sometimes a topic stays in the front of my mind for a while, challenging more thought, more research or just more focus. After a recent visit to my dentist, I thought about this particular relationship, with one’s dentist. (See also PCs 64 & 66 ‘Molars & Wisdom’) (Note 1) No matter how much you like them, once you’re in that chair you are captive to their whims. Unable to communicate as the suction device that removes your saliva is pulling your bottom lip down and your top lip feels the size of an Orca due to an injection, the best you can do is a quiet ‘er!’, ‘ah! or ‘oh!’ as appropriate. And where do you look? Stare at them, or obliquely at the nurse, or at the television that some modern Dental Clinics have installed above the chair but in the latter case if you don’t want to watch football …..?

Incidentally on Monday (20^th) had to go to Hove Implant Clinic. I didn’t need a reminder as that morning’s Codeword in the Times had ‘Implant’ as one of the answers!

I had been chatting to Mo for 20 minutes or so when Sami & Lisa walked in, shaking the rain off their umbrella, and sat down. Never enough time in the day and I needed to be on my way, I said goodbye to Mo and went across to Sami.

Without sitting down, I asked them if they would like to come to supper, as I sensed we could have an interesting evening. They looked delighted, so I offered to email some dates and walked out into the rain.

Richard 24^th March 2023

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS You may have read in PC 326 the simple observation that Dove’s were advertising their Men’s skin care products alongside a rugby match, all brawn and toughness. (See note 2 below) Rather made a dent in the traditional image of male hunks and cauliflower ears, singing raunchy songs in a post-match bath and drinking huge quantities of beer. I made another observation during the Ireland V Scotland game the other weekend; Guinness, the sponsor of the whole Six Nations tournament and renowned for its creamy dark stout, was advertising its ‘0.0’ ((ie no alcohol) beer. At last the separation of being a top athlete and alcohol is being understood; at least by the athletes but probably not by the spectators!

Note 1 I remember that when stationed in Germany a very appropriate slang word we  used for ‘dentist’ is ‘fang-farrier’; so descriptive! The proper word is zahnarzt (m) or zahnārztin (f).

Note 2 Women’s Rugby and Football are two of the fastest growing sports in the UK.

I love going into the Hope Café, never quite sure who will be there, apart from Josh and Susie behind the counter. Teresa from the Brazilian delicatessen next door occasionally pops in as does Duncan, the Hope’s manager. As you will appreciate, finding copy for my postcards is an on-going, delightful chore and places like The Hope, or on the bus, or in the supermarket, or on television, or traveling here and there, prompt ideas that sometimes take root, germinate.

Last year there was a programme on television I found fascinating. It was simply called ‘Couples Therapy’ and was a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the interaction between an Israeli-American psychoanalyst, Doctor Orna Gurainik and those seeking help with their relationships.

Interviewed about it, Orna said: “I think good TV, like good literature, gives people a space where they can imagine themselves in the shoes of someone else. It’s like a rehearsal. It’s the way play prepares us for a real experience. The participants in the show are incredibly courageous and generous. They’re giving the audience the option to jump into their shoes and go through the experience with them. (Ed: I find myself equally in either Orna’s shoes or those of the clients!)

My take on what makes things easier for couples and families is to be really mindful of boundaries and space. Create boundaries, respect boundaries, even artificial ones, Create space because there’s so much mashed togetherness in a ‘state of anxiety’ that I think is adding distress rather than helping. That would be my prime advice.”

I am much taken by the third series, airing now of British television, and was ruminating about one particular aspect as I entered the café, when I spied Mo, sitting at a corner table, head down into her mobile. She looked up and beckoned me over. I am always intrigued by people’s ‘back stories’ and knew nothing about Mo, apart from the fact she had been reading ‘Act of Oblivion’, Robert Harris’ latest book when I had first met her, (See PC 322 February 2023) so I was keen to elicit more!! Sometimes I have to preface the conversation with: ‘I am sorry if I appear nosey, it’s just that during my 16 years of 1:1 executive coaching, I found it fascinating to hear my client’s answers to “So how did you get to be here? Tell me about yourself?”

Mo admitted she had been a senior teacher in a private girls’ school but had decided to move to Hove to be near her aging mother, a fiercely independent woman who lived on her own in a retirement complex in Shoreham. We talked about this and that …… and what she was watching in television …… and she mentioned the Couples Therapy programme.

“Fascinating isn’t it?” I said; “This new series started when we were in Brazil so I recorded it. We’ve watched the first episode.”

“Well, I think I am up to date but I was stopped in my tracks during the first session of India and Dale, when they were explaining how they got to be where there were, on the couch so to speak”.

India and Dale

“Tell me more?”

“Firstly I needed to understand exactly what was said ….”

“At the beginning?”

“Yes, so I wrote it down:

“India: “I was born in Georgia and am an actress; have been in The Lion King here in New York for 8 years now. I met him, Dale, after my first three months and we dated for 4 years.”

“Dale: I come from an immigrant family. I was born in Guyana and then moved to Antigua when I was about four. We moved up here to New York City when I was a teenager. I feel like there are definitely underlying issues we struggle with and it sometimes it shouldn’t be as stressful as it is, it’s hard.”

 …. and this is the bit that rocked me back on my heels, so to speak ……

“I think as Afro-Americans we come into relationships with a lot of trauma that we are not necessarily willing to acknowledge, ready to accept, and there has to be a lot of soul/self-searching in order to understand how real life affects your relationship.”

 …. he seems to separate real life and relationships ……”

“You can’t have a relationship in a vacuum can you?”

“Don’t think so! A relationship with anyone, with anything, happens within the physical, emotional, spiritual boundaries of ‘real life’ There’s no other artificial place surely? But what about his belief that Afro-Americans carry a lot of trauma?”

“I can only assume he means from their historical past, going back to days of slavery?” And as one does these days, when the information lies through the Google portal, I got my laptop out and found, inter alia, “The Traumatic Impact of Structural Racism on African Americans” (Note 1)

“It’s interesting, something I have never been aware of, but there is a great belief that historical trauma, created in this case by the Slave Trade, is an example of intergenerational trauma whose effects can be felt generations later.”

Got me wondering whether other groups subconsciously are affected by ‘historical trauma’, such as Jews, persecuted over centuries, or the English with the invasion by the Vikings, and whether it really does play out in our relationships today, or is it just a crutch for some to lean on? And at this important point, I looked at my watch:

“Sorry Mo, could we continue this discussion next week, I really have to dash?”

“Sure!” a little surprised, “Next week? Wednesday?”

I nodded to Susie as I was passing the counter: “Has Sami been in recently?”

“Oh! Didn’t he tell you? He and Lisa have gone off to a yoga retreat in Kerala for a week and then another week exploring Goa.”

“Lucky chap!” I muttered as I thought of the heat of southern India and headed out into the March cold.

Richard 17^th March 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 The Traumatic Impact of Structural Racism on African Americans 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8352535/

Here in the United Kingdom we are coming to the end of Rugby’s Six Nations tournament, where teams from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy all play each other over 6 weeks or so. Whilst football is the more popular game here, rugby has a dedicated following and is a more physical game. Think ‘rugby forward’ and you think ‘big’; the six prop forwards in the current pool for the English team average 125kg each, while the lock forwards are over 2 metres in height. The rules are constantly changing to ensure than injuries are minimised, unrecognisable to those being applied when I hung up my boots aged 31 some decades ago.

Given the human brawn on display during these matches, it was surprising to see on the electronic advertising panels alongside the pitch during one match, in between ‘Enjoy Guinness today’ and ‘O2 for your mobile network’ (Note 1), ‘Dove’s Men’s Moisturiser’.

We have come a long way!! In 2019 the UK Men’s Grooming Market was worth some £500 million and is increasing year-on-year. Of course it’s somewhat dwarfed by the Women’s Cosmetic Market – £9.8 billion in 2017. (See also ‘What Moisturiser Do You Use?’ PC 162 October 2019)

I had to go to our local doctor’s surgery the other day and managed a face-to-face with a real, live human doctor. The following day I was on the bus on my way back from the morning hot yoga session and saw I had an email from the NHS. I opened it; to access the message I needed to add my email address, then decide whether the diagrammatic car’s final destination was at ‘X’ or ‘Y’ to prove I was a human being, which I managed to do eventually (!), re-input my email address, wait for a six-figure ‘security code’ to arrive on my mobile, find my password and eventually get to the message: “How was your visit to your GP?” Think I should get another appointment to check my mental health?

I’ll never need Ayesha Vardag, a lawyer the super-rich call to help them get divorced. Rather like the model Evangelista who famously said during an interview for Vogue magazine: “We (as in we super-models) don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day”, Ayesha specialises in cases where the assets are in excess of £100 million. But she was interviewed for the Sunday Times’ ‘A Life in The Day’ column which, at the end, asks the subject what their ‘words of wisdom’ would be:

Best Advice I was given: – “You have to howl until you find your pack”. Although I spent twenty years in the British Army, it was only when I left and found a different group of people to mix with did I experience a greater affinity!

Advice I’d give: – “When something bad happens, remember it may have saved you from much worse, or may bring you something much better.” I am an eternal optimist so concur. There’s always an upside.

What I wish I’d known: – “Don’t waste time on people who don’t care about you, and move mountains to be with the people who do.” Ah! Yes! The ‘false friends’.

My friend Eddie in Weymouth sent me this lovely story and claimed it is true. I asked where it had come from and he replied an old man down the street had told him (Note 2). OK then!

“On 20^th July 1969 Commander of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, Neil Armstrong, stepped onto the surface of the moon. We all remember his: “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” As he re-entered the Lander, he murmured: “Good luck, Mr Gorsky.” Many people at NASA thought this casual remark concerned some rival Soviet cosmonaut, but research found no such surname in any of the space programmes. Over the years many people had asked Neil Armstrong about this remark and he would simply smile, giving no explanation.

But in 1995, in the follow-up questions after a presentation, a reporter asked the same question, “Who is Mr Gorsky?” As Mr Gorsky had by now died, Neil felt he was able to answer. “In 1938, I was playing baseball with a chum in the back yard at home in the mid-west when the ball went over our neighbour’s fence and landed by a window. My neighbours were Mr & Mrs Gorsky. As I bent down to pick up the ball, I heard Mrs Gorsky yelling at her husband. “Sex? You want sex? You’ll get sex when (pause to think of some unlikely event) the kid next door walks on the moon.”

Somewhere in a February postcard, PC 321 ‘All I want …’, I wrote: “And on the subject of acceptance, we have a number of religions on the planet and there is a degree of ‘If you don’t agree with our beliefs, you must be against us.’ No! I am not; I just want you to accept I am not.” I was pleased that our Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, recently publically agreed: “We do not have blasphemy laws in Great Britain, and must not be complicit in the attempts to impose them on this country. There is no right not to be offended. There is no legal obligation to be reverent towards any religion. The lodestar of our democracy is freedom of speech. Nobody can demand respect for their belief system, even if it is a religion. People are legally entitled to reject — and to leave — any religion. There is no apostasy law in this country. The act of accusing someone of apostasy or blasphemy is effectively inciting violence upon that person.”

Exactly!

And finally, here in England we often say “A pinch and a punch for the first of the month” on its first day, the ‘pinch’ referring to throwing a pinch of salt to keep witches at bay and the punch to banish them forever, but used in a school’s playground in a physical way. Saying ‘White Rabbits no return’ means no one will pinch you back, although somehow I think on the 1^st of March you say March Hares, but I could be very confused! Interestingly, according to Rahmi, in central Turkey they say ‘Open the door and bring the log in’ as by the beginning of March all their chopped firewood has been used up and they have to resort to bigger bits.

More scribbles next week.

Richard 10^th March 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Why does the battery of one’s smoke alarm always fail between midnight and 0300 causing its incessant beep to invade your sleep?

Note 1 O2 are one of the sponsors of the English Rugby team

Note 2 Maybe he was Neil Armstrong’s boyhood friend.

“I have seen monsters. I know what they look like.” says Rita, eyes locked on Nell’s. “The Nazis yes. The ones in the uniforms and goose-stepping in the streets. But it was the townspeople of my village, looking for all the world like good citizens and good Christians, who reported my family. And it was the local police who arrested them and handed them to the Germans. The real monsters.”

“I am not sure I understand.”

“The Hatheson police told me my son was a monster, a murderer.”

“But you don’t believe that?”

“You are telling me what I believe?”

“Yes.” Nell gestures to the pictures on the wall, the pantheon of Rita’s family.”

The reason for this extract from the Australian author Chris Hammer’s new book “Dead Man’s Creek” will, I hope, become obvious, as a series of unrelated events, coincidences even, come together to add colour to this postcard about monsters, although the topic doesn’t really need any colour.

The word ‘pantheon’ means a group of particularly important or famous people and it came to me one night as a collective for the selection of murderers this postcard refers to. It then appeared the following day, in the above extract; it’s not a common word! The fictional Rita, aged 5 and an Austrian Jew, had been staying with an uncle in the country when the Nazis, alerted by neighbours to the presence of a Jewish family in their midst, had rounded up her parents and siblings and sent them to their deaths in a concentration camp. She and hundreds of other orphans were shipped to Australia for a more peaceful upbringing.  

Marcel Marceau

Still unsure where this is going? Well, a few months ago I watched a 2020 film on television called “Resistance” about a Jewish actor, Marcel Mangel (1923 – 2007) , who in 1942 joins the French resistance in Lyon to save thousands of orphaned children from the Nazis. Mangel survived the war and went on to become famous as Marcel Marceau the mime artist. As I watched the film it began to dawn on me that the Gestapo in charge of Lyon was famously known as The Butcher of Lyon. So I expected to find out that at the end of the war he was tried at Nuremburg, found guilty and executed.

I was really saddened to read otherwise. I bought Tom Bower’s 1985 book ‘Klaus Barbie Butcher of Lyon’ and read it, acknowledging it had been written two years after Barbie had been extradited to France from Bolivia and indicted for war crimes in 1984.

I was still reading this book when we flew off to The Atacama in Chile in January (see PCs 319 & 320) and, as you do when you join excursions organised by tour companies, chatted to our fellow travellers. One lovely couple were from Berlin and another from Lyon; it seemed apposite. That and the fact we were only a short distance from the border with Bolivia.

As the war ended, Barbie changed his name and managed to move back into Germany where he got in touch with the United States Intelligence Services. It’s hard to imagine the chaos in Germany after the May 1945 surrender; civilians, refugees, service personnel, no functioning government and from an American point-of-view, a real threat from Soviet Russia. Barbie was employed by the Americans for his anti-communist network of informers and spies. In 1950 the French, who had established Barbie was working in Germany for the US, appealed for his arrest and extradition. The Americans apparently refused and used a well-established ‘rat line’ to send him via Italy to Bolivia. There he spent 30 years living under the name Klaus Altmann, assisting various dictators in their oppression of the regime’s opponents. Nazi-hunters identified him in 1971by some fingerprints, but the Bolivians refused to extradite him to France. (Note 1)

A change in Bolivian politics meant that in 1983 he was finally extradited to France. His trial started in 1987; charged with 41 separate counts of ‘crimes against humanity’, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, the death penalty having been abolished in 1981.  He died in 1991 in jail in Lyon aged 71, a far nicer end to his life than the 4,342 individuals whose murders he sanctioned or the 7,591 men, women and children his organisation sent to concentration camps in Germany and Poland and to a certain death, and far, far nicer than those 14,300 who were arrested and tortured, his moniker, the Butcher of Lyon, reflecting the true evil in this man.

While I read the book, two other names surfaced through the sediment of my memory – Mengele and Eichman.

Joseph Mengeles

Adolf Eichman

Adolf Eichman, the main architect of Hitler’s Final Solution, slipped out of Europe to Argentina, where there was a vibrant German community and politicians sympathetic to the Nazi ideology. Eichman lived in Buenos Aires until 1960 when Mossad agents captured him and smuggled him, drugged, out of the country as an El Al flight crew member. After a four month trial in Jerusalem he was found guilty and hanged in May 1962.

Josef Mengele was known as the ‘Angel of Death’ because of his experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz; his penchant was to use pregnant women, twins and the disabled as human guinea pigs. After the war he fled to Argentina and lived quite openly in Buenos Aires, but after Eichman’s capture he disappeared, eventually living in Brazil under the name Wolfgang Gerhard. He managed to evade Nazi hunters but drowned in the sea in Sao Paulo State in 1979 aged 67.

And now I remember Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the millions slain during the rise of Mao in China, the Disappeared of Argentina’s Dirty War, the political opponents of Chile’s General Pinochet who were tortured or executed ….. and I have hardly scratched the surface of the monster fraternity!!

But that pantheon of murderers must surely be headed, certainly in the C20th, by both Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, between the two of them responsible for the deaths of over 26 million human beings. Maybe Putin’s on the short list for this century?

Richard 3^rd March 2023

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 If he had been extradited and found guilty, he would have been executed.

You may have gathered Celina and I returned to Rio de Janeiro in the second week of January, three years since our last visit. The way Brazil coped with the Covid pandemic was not helped by its then president’s declaration that Covid-19 was no worse than influenza; some 693,000 people died. But globally we have learned to live with this virus and it was only on the beach the other day that I was reminded of slight uncertainties in our post-covid world.

In one of my very first postcards, ‘Beach Life in Brazil’ (PC 08 2014) I wrote about how Brazilians love to spend time on the beach. I added a little postscript (PC 09) about bums and cellulite. Here’s an extract of PC 08:

“Sanwhitches Natooral, Sanwhitches Natooral!” In Portuguese this is actually ‘Sanduiche Natural’, but this is how my untrained ear hears it. For me it epitomises this beach life in Brazil. The elderly chap carries a cool-box over one shoulder, but his body is bent by the uneven weight, his head bowed and he seems to drag his feet through the hot sand, forever crying “Sanduiches Natural” with great enthusiasm! Honestly, would you ever want a sandwich when it’s 36°C? He’s become so familiar me that when I don’t hear him, I wonder whether he’s OK!!”

And now that’s a serious consideration. I don’t see him, don’t hear him except in my memory, and I wonder whether he became a statistic, one of those 693,000. Uncertainty can create sadness. (Note 1)

When I first came to Rio de Janeiro in April 2012 the country’s booming economic cycle, driven by exports of raw materials, was coming to an end: the exchange rate was some Rs 3.25 to the pound. It was one of the BRIC countries, the others being Russia, India, China and South Africa, and this group’s aims were to promote ‘peace, security, development and cooperation.’ Reading those aims in 2023 the word ‘high-falutin’ comes to mind, worthy and idealistic. Maybe the odd disappointment here? Over ten years later the exchange rate is Rs 6.25 to the pound and people here are complaining about the price of basic foodstuffs – just like everywhere else! (Note 2)

One morning we grabbed a cup of coffee in a café in one of the many shopping malls in Leblon, the Rio suburb next to Iponema and Copacabana. The owner was Portuguese and had stencilled some quotes from one of his country’s most famous poets, Fernando Pessoa, on the walls. This one caught my eye: “É preciso tempo para acalmar e recomeçar”

‘I need time to calm down and start again.’

Perfect to think about, sipping a double espresso ……..

Do you cook? I do and I’m thankful that the little chaps in the design centre for Anchor butter, amongst others, ensure the paper has lines dividing the 250g pack into 50g segments.

In Brazil the pack is different, slightly smaller at 200g and the measurements go up in 25g increments; not sure whether this makes it easier for the innumerate or not – just an observation!  

In my postcard PC 235 Generosity in Government (June 2021) I wrote about the investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, when 72 individuals died as fire swept upwards through the 24 story building. Five years on and the UK Government’s  Housing Minister Michael Gove had admitted there had been an “active willingness” on the part of developers to endanger lives for profit and blamed collective government failures “over many years”. (Note 3) On 30^th January he announced a six-week deadline for developers to sign a government contract to fix their unsafe tower-blocks – or be banned from the market!

Some of you may have watched a recent drama on British television called ‘Tokyo Vice; an American Reporter on the Vice beat in Japan’? It intrigued me enough to read Jake Adelstein’s account of his 12 years in Japan as the first non-Japanese reporter on the newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun. Lots of interesting stuff in this book, some apparently open to criticism as to its voracity, but often demonstrating how nations have developed differently and how what appears normal in one is abnormal in another. For instance Jake wrote many articles about the seedier side of Japanese life, in particular the goings-on in the red light district of Tokyo, Kabukichō. And you know what? In the west we talk about the moment of sexual ejaculation as ‘coming’: in Japan it’s known as ‘going’! Who knew? I guess it depends on your viewpoint? But now I am really confused, not sure whether I am coming or going.

What started as a little joke on Twitter for Lev Parikian, to find the most popular random English word, resulted in over a million votes for 4096 words, whittled down over a year to the winning word Shenanigans; Codswallop came second. You can imagine the scope of this fun idea when the third-place play-off was between Bollocks and Higgledy-piggledy. I scribbled about long words and stuff in PC 275 Kerfuffle et al March 2022.

For those aspiring writers among you, I think this is worth putting somewhere near your ‘work station’, be it in the back bedroom, in the office at the bottom of the garden or on the downstairs loo. The late author and seafarer Jonathan Raban said: “The word fiction doesn’t come from some imaginary Latin word meaning: ‘I make things up as I go along’. It comes from a real Latin word which means ‘I give shape to things’ and I think that taking the material of an actual journey through life and trying to pattern it and discover plot in it is turning it into fiction in the best sense.” And you may remember me quoting the late Australian Clive James: “All I do is turn a phrase until it catches the light.”

All of us who want to turn our thoughts into words look for that, I guess, wanting them to ‘catch the light’!

Richard 24^th February 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Before we left, Celina went for a last dip. She heard Sanduiche Man in the distance. Phew!

Note 2 You may remember from PC 320 The Atacama (2) that Chile has a GDP per capita of US$24,474 whereas Brazil’s is some 60% of that at US$15,553.

Note 3 It sounds as though the disregard for earthquake building regulations in southern Turkey has caused tens of thousands of individuals to die. 

One of the joys of life is to return to the familiar, to catch up with others, to chew the fat and gossip. So it was this week I managed to push open the Hope Café doors for the first time this year, be washed by the warmth of people and the fug from the heating! I immediately spied Sami and Lisa at a corner table as I expected, as we had exchange texts earlier to ensure we could meet. As I walked in, I saw another lady, sixty-something and blonde, quietly reading Robert Harris’ latest book ‘The Act of Oblivion’.

On my way past, nosey as I am, I ask if she’s enjoying it.

“Only just started it” she says “but I love the idea that it’s kept quite close to the historical facts, that when Oliver Cromwell died and the monarchy was restored, there was a hunt for those who had signed King Charles 1’s death warrant. Have you read it?”

King Charles 1’s Death Warrant, with 59 signatories

“Yes … and, given that I don’t generally like historical novels, I found it brilliant. I’m Richard by the way.” “Hello Richard, I’m Mo.”

Not wanting to intrude further, I hoped she’d enjoy her coffee and moved across to Sami’s table. Lisa offered to get me an espresso and left to talk to Josh behind the counter.

“So pleased to see you Richard. Looking well! Haven’t seen you since before Christmas, so bring me up to date. Didn’t you say you were going to Rio de Janeiro?”

“Yes, we had just over three weeks, living in my brother-in-law’s apartment in Barra da Tijuca; he and his family are in Portugal. Wonderful views of Pedro de Gavea, the granite and gneiss mountain that rises 844m almost straight out of the sea. Normally we see its south eastern side. Look! Here’s a photo from that side

……. and this from somewhere near the top

……. and this the view from Barra by the light of a full moon.

During that time we flew off to The Atacama desert in northern Chile for five nights (see PCs 319 & 320).”

“Wow! How was that?”

“Not like anything we have done before, although we acknowledge that we tend to travel to places where there aren’t many people!! (Other places include Alaska, PCs 44 & 45 July 2015, and The Pantanal PCs 17 & 20 Aug/Sep 2014).” I sensed Sami and Lisa wanted to see some photographs so opened my iPad and tried not to bore them too much!

Part of the Moon Valley, north of San Pedro de Atacama

Sami seems very relaxed and his relationship with Lisa is obviously doing him good. He tells me the Post Office Enquiry is now focusing on the IT systems and Post Office Management response, although he’s fairly sanguine about any compensation for lives destroyed (See my postcard PC 235 Generosity in Government (June 2021)).

“Did you see that nonsense in France about the attempt by Emmanuel Macron to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64? Well, we think it’s nonsense but most people in France don’t. Look, I found this interesting table about retirement ages and life expectancy:

Sami, you and I weren’t around when the UK Government first introduced a state pension; it was in 1908. You could claim it on your 70^th birthday; it seems the treasury didn’t have to put a huge amount into the pension pot, as life expectancy for men was 51!  

Nations treat the elderly differently. In Latin America we are recognised in a number of different ways; I have experienced a few. Many years ago we had taken the bus from Rio de Janeiro to Petropolis (See PC 6 2014), about a two hour trip. On arrival in the bus terminal I needed to pop to the loo and, after showing proof of age (!), was waved through the turnstile by the attendant. On this trip both entering Chile at Santiago airport and entering Brazil when we returned, we had our own ‘passport control queue’. In Rio this was very fortunate as five aeroplanes had landed within a few minutes of each other (1000 passengers?) and the queue snaked forwards, around, backwards, around and would have taken hours! In Brazil the local supermarket chain Zona Sul has a check-out queue for those with walking sticks and the elderly; I am not proud when it comes to using it and Celina’s in my wake!”

Sami, Lisa and I caught up with other news.

“You know”, says Sami,” the war in Ukraine has, for obvious reasons, stayed in our consciousness since the invasion in February last year but not necessarily now at the top. Today the horrific earthquake in south eastern Turkey and Syria has our attention, for this loss of life is not the result of someone’s misguided ambitions and hunger for attention, Putin The Pigheaded, ……”

“Hey That’s my name for him, Sami!

“I know! I pinched it!  …. but the earth’s crust doing a little adjustment. In its scale, just a minor itch, but the reality for those buried under collapsed buildings is final.”

Rahmi my local newsagent is Turkish and has many relatives living there, but fortunately just to the north of the earthquake zone; one aunt has a broken leg. In his shop by the till is a plastic container used as a donation box and it’s already very full of folding money.”

Before I leave I go and have a chat with Susie, as the last time I saw her she told me her cousin had been knocked over by an electric scooter in Clapham and was in St George’s Hospital’s ICU. (See PC 312 December 2023)

“They performed miracles, Richard; seriously! There was a neurosurgeon Henry Marsh who managed to stop the brain bleed and the long term outlook is very positive. It’s over two months ago and he should be discharged next week.”

I couldn’t tell her that about the same time my sister-in-law, living in Portugal, had choked on some bread, suffered a blockage of her airways and had subsequently died. All too raw: maybe next time.

I nod to Mo as I leave, mouth ‘maybe see you next time’, and go out into the fresh air.

Richard 17^th February 2023

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Sunrise is often an enchanting time, the promise of a day of one’s life. Wednesday’s was stunning!

I know it’s February already but other topics got priority for my scribbles! Even taking a succinct look at what I want for 2023 (see PC 318) resulted in the need to have a second postcard. Could of course go on and on!!

If two individuals are having a conversation about the price of eggs, or Aunt Jemima’s pancakes, or why they should lose weight, or simply catching up with the relevant or irrelevant gossip, and a mobile, ‘cell’ if you’re American, rings, I want its owner not to say “Sorry! I have to take this”, sometimes not even looking down to see who’s calling them. If you are talking to someone, it’s nice to have their full attention and vica versa. It may be convenient for the person calling to make the call, but may not be for those having a chat. Yet there seems to be a compulsion to answer it and I want it to stop for it’s such bad manners and downright rude.

I want us to repeat to ourselves, every day, that there are no guarantees in life and the time we are given is precious; we need to make the most of every day. A cliché? So what!

We all hate plastic and it’s become the environmental bogyman! But the plastic has become stronger and you can no longer rip it. I want this to change!

I had to cut this plastic bag of potatoes with some scissors!

I know that many other countries are grappling with the same issues as the United Kingdom, different in some nationalistic ways but the real nub the same. One particular one, put briefly: how do you provide affordable health and social care for a population where the proportion of those needing care is growing and that cost has to be paid for by the working population which is shrinking. I want the current government to scope a solution.

The NHS in the United Kingdom is a money pit that suffers from a hugely inefficient bureaucracy. Currently it’s struggling to cope with huge numbers of Covid and winter influenza cases and something needs to change. Too many vested interests have resisted change and more public money is poured after public money, for no identifiable difference. There are lots of good suggestions floating around and not one of them says throw more money at it. If I need to see a health specialist, a dermatologist for instance, I need to go through my GP to get a referral. Why? Why can’t I ring a dermatologist?  

During the pandemic all doctor’s appointments went online; many have stayed on line. But if you can’t get a GP appointment and are so minded to present yourself at A&E for your in-growing toenail or other minor ailment, the ‘cost’ of the A&E appointment is about £360 whereas your GP’s about £40. Makes no sense!

The shadow health secretary has suggested working to phase out smoking, highlighting the damage to individuals’ and the nation’s health and the costs incurred as a result. I could say the same about drinking; on a conservative estimate some 50% of the paramedic’s call-outs are to someone where alcohol is the cause. I want the message to be starker, more understood. I want us all to take more personal responsibility for what we do and how we do it. Recently during a strike by paramedics, attendance at A&E was down 60%. There must have been a proportion of these who didn’t bother to go the following day, having solved the issues themselves?   

I take some medications as a result of having a heart bypass ten years ago. Do I need to take them for ever? So often GPs simply add a new medication for a patient and never review the whole list. Some 80 year olds are apparently taking over 8 different medications. This could be costly for the NHS and I want someone to do a review.

          We sadly too often read of a case where, for whatever reason, a man, and it’s usually a man, has had enough of his family; he decides that the only way to gain personal satisfaction is to kill them, and then commit suicide. Even in this moment of madness, I want him to spare his children. (Note 1)

In the United Kingdom the maximum length of our Parliament is five years. So the political party spends 18 months trying to implement its election campaign commitments, soft peddling for a year or so before thinking how it’s going to win the next general election. I want a new apolitical body to help define some form of National Strategy that has a 10 – 20 year view.

I want us all to accept others for whom and what they are, but we seem to have got our knickers in a complete twist when it comes to gender identity and sexual orientation. I understand that for a small section of our society these are weighty matters and deserve attention, discussion, advice and debate, but when teachers are asked to ‘identify’ with a personal pronoun, I am afraid I roll my eyes skywards. And on the subject of acceptance, we have a number of religions on the planet and there is a degree of ‘If you don’t agree with our beliefs, you must be against us.’ No! I am not; I just want you to accept I am not.

I remember, many years ago, reading of the planned renovation of a tall brick/stone tower that had steps to the top, giving those who made the climb a wonderful view of the surrounding countryside. The grant making the renovation possible required that it had access for wheelchair users. This would have meant the installation of a lift and there wasn’t room in the tower for a lift-shaft. So the renovation didn’t go ahead and the tower was closed, depriving the huge majority the experience to climb up. I want more common sense please!

Mind you, if the predictions about extinction (see PC 318) are to be believed future generations will not have to worry about these ‘wants’ or anything else for that matter!

Richard 10^th February 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Last weekend we had another case. George Pattison, 39, murdered his forty-five year old wife, Epsom College’s head teacher Emma, and their daughter Lettie (7) and then committed suicide. He spared the Labrador puppy ….. but not his daughter.

We continue …. (see PC 319) ……

In my first postcard about The Atacama I mentioned San Pedro being known locally as the ‘Clay Town’. A few kilometres to the south east lies the little town of Toconao, known as the ‘Brick Town’. Unlike San Pedro’s red clay rendering, the houses here are faced with bricks and stone from a nearby quarry.

Toconao church; its door is made from cactus wood

Such is the height of the extinct volcanoes that make up the Andes range, running some 8900kms from the southern tip of Chile to the Caribbean Sea, on the Atacama plateau they are always there, on the horizon, out of the corner of your eye. (Note 1)   

One lagoon worth visiting is Tebinquinche, for it had enough water for a swim, although the salt content was so high floating was the only option! The local tourism organisation had built a changing and showering block, both essential with the heat and the need to rid oneself of the covering of salt.

We were joined on this outing by a German couple and another from France. The elderly German was conspicuous as he was 2.02m (6ft 8”) tall and naturally had played basketball!! I asked the Frenchman Pierre where he came from and he said Lyon. After the normal pleasantries I said I had recently watched the film ‘Resistance’ on British television, about Marcel Mangel (aka Marceau) and how he aided the escape of hundreds of Jewish children out of the sadistic clutches of Klaus Barbie during the Nazi occupation of Lyon. Interestingly his wife immediately said that no one talked about that time, reflecting the difficulties any population has living under foreign occupation, how whole families were torn apart by shifting loyalties and how the repercussions echo down the decades to this day.

An overcast sky meant the ‘Stars & Fire’ tour was cancelled so we missed the opportunity to lie on our backs at midnight and gaze into the heavens. By reputation the skies in the deserts of the world are wonderful. Naturally volcanoes have hot springs and geysers. Andrea and Andreas, our Berlin friends from our first excursion, went out to one, the early hotel departure time dictated by when the geysers normally gush. When they arrived it was about 0615 and -8C, but fortunately soon warmed up!

Our third venture into the dry landscape was to Rainbow Valley (Valle del Arcoiris), lying in the Rio Grande basin about 90kms from San Pedro. Our Trekana guide this time was an ebullient Argentinian called Nicholas, who had married and settled in San Pedro. Joel, who runs a leather fashion-ware company in Boulder, Colorado and his wife Elke who has an online leather bags business (www.byelke.com) were our companions.

The Rainbow Valley landscape was extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. We went from: “Wow!”

……to “blimey!”

….. to an unspoken: “I really can’t believe this!”

The valley obviously owes its name to the various colours of the rock formations – red, beige, green, white, yellow and blue, overlaid with white salt and under a deep blue sky. We have all seen the results of a copper roof oxidising over some years, the roof developing a blue/green patina. Here it was in nature!

On the day of our flight back to Santiago, we had breakfast overlooking the Valle de Luna, before driving down into it for a 45 minute walk. It’s not often you can have some fruit, yogurt and coffee with this sort of view:

Our companions on this trip were eight Chileans up from Conceptión, just south of Santiago, for a long weekend; four of them were surgeons. Leonardo was married to a surgeon but was actually a real estate/property developer and thinking of emigrating to New Zealand. Being British my thoughts go east and around the world to ‘Down Under’. If you’re Chilean you simply look west! 

Conspiracy theorists and other nutters have often claimed that the moon landing of 1969 was faked! Well, they could easily have been somewhere here in Luna Valle, such was its dramatic mixture of craters and cliffs and dunes and aridness.

And how do you get to the Atacama? Unless you’re rich enough to fly your private jet into Calama, us mortals fly via Chile’s capital Santiago. We bookended our Atacama trip with two nights in the Ismail 312 hotel, just on the north side of Barrio Lastarria. Our first night was disturbed by a loud party across the river and shortened by the airlines requiring one to be at the airport three hours before our departure time! Drifting around Barrio Lastarria before our flight back to Rio, we recognised the restaurant that Franco took us to in February 2017 on our first trip to Santiago (PC 89)

The more I travel, the more I need to understand what makes a country tick, at least understand how they got to be what they are today and their place on the world’s stage. So having established that copper is Chile’s major export, it was interesting on this trip to learn that Lithium is being extracted from deep beneath the salt flats of The Atacama. Lithium (Li) is the least dense metal and the least dense solid element and has been used to treat depression and mania for centuries. More recently it’s become the star of modern battery development, so important in the burgeoning Electric Car industry. And by the way, it’s unlikely you’ve eaten Chilean cherries recently, as almost 9/10^th of the country’s total production, for instance some 352,000 tonnes in 2021, is exported to China.

As far as Chile is concerned, its small population of 19.5 million gives it a GDP per capita US$24,474. Compare this with its continental neighbour Brazil, with its population of 214 million and GDP per capita US$15,553, some 60% of that of Chile. (Note 2 & 3)

So pleased we now have some experience of The Atacama; a beautiful, wild, unearthly and fascinating place. I urge you to go and see it!

Richard 3^rd February 2023

Rio de Janeiro

www.postcardscribbles .co.uk

Note 1 The highest mountain, Aconcagua and 6961m high, lies in the Mendoza Province of Argentina, just to the north east of Chile’s capital Santiago.

Note 2 The United Kingdom has a population 67 million and GDP per capita US$44,920.

Note 3 Chile is ranked 58, Brazil 82 and the UK 26 in a comparative list of the GDP per capita of 190 countries.

Chile has always been an intriguing country, so long and so thin, stretching for over 4270kms from its border with Bolivia in the north to its tip on the bottom of the Americas and, on average, only 177kms east to west. For its entire length the mountain range of The Andes defines its geography and ecosystems. But the geo-political entirety of the country only came together in the 1880s, when Chile triumphed in the War of the Pacific and annexed Peru’s southern shoreline and Bolivia’s entire Pacific coast, so land-locking the latter country. At the same time, its troops conquered the indigenous Mapuche people and their land south of Santiago was subsumed into modern Chile.

Down south, the region known as Patagonia is shared with Argentina, the Chilean side characterised by glacial fjords and temperate rainforest whilst it’s the Argentinian side of the Andes that has arid steppes and deserts. North of the squeezed middle with the cities of Santiago (See PC 89 Franco’s Santiago 2017) and Valparaiso lies one of the driest places on earth, the Atacama desert and to its north east lies the tourist town of San Pedro de Atacama.

Main Street, San Pedro

Distinguished by the reddish colour of its clay buildings, it’s …. “a town set on a high plateau in the Andes mountains of north-eastern Chile. Its dramatic surrounding landscape incorporates desert, salt flats, volcanoes, geysers and hot springs. The Valle de la Luna nearby is a lunar-like depression.”

Enough of a basic geography lesson, or reminder (?) Why, you might ask, is this postcard seemingly from Latin America? As Covid travel restrictions eased, in November last year we planned to return to Rio de Janeiro and thought about ‘doing the Atacama and Patagonia’, such is the success of Chile’s tourism advertising; these two, plus Easter Island, have become the go-to destinations. 

Luckily one of my Godsons is married to the co-founder of a UK travel agent who specialises in Latin America (www.latinroutes.co.uk). The first draft suggestions from Latin Routes covered both the Atacama and Patagonia. Scrutiny of the journey from the Atacama to Patagonia revealed an early start, two interconnecting flights and, after arriving in Punta Arenas Airport late in the day, a six hour trip in a 4×4 to the lodge. This would not have been a holiday so Patagonia will have to wait for another time!

San Pedro in the centre, mountain lakes bottom right and Rainbow Valley due north

I hadn’t realised how much one might be affected by a change of altitude. Rio de Janeiro is, obviously, at sea level (doh!) and Santiago at 570m. We arrived in northern Chile and drove into San Pedro de Atacama, which lies at 2450m. Someone mentioned we might feel its effects but I can only describe it as walking across a swinging rope bridge, not quite sure where my next step would be and whether my legs were moving independently! On our first excursion we ended up at the mountain lakes of Miscanti and Miniques at 4150 metres.

Fortunately I was wearing a T shirt from the Dutch ‘Iceman’ Wim Hof with ‘Breathe …. Motherf***kers’ emblazoned across the chest! You needed to consciously breathe full breathes and take short steps.

For our first excursion our Trekana guide Mauricio had met us at our Noi Casa hotel and we joined Andrea and Andreas from Berlin and another couple from Madrid. We were staying in the same hotel as Andrea & Andreas and got to know them; we hope to keep in touch. We drove out to the large salt flats of Laguana Chaxa, the ‘Salar de Atacamas’, lying some 30 minutes south of San Pedro in the Los Flamencos National Reserve.

Actually ‘large’ is an inadequate word, as they extend some 150kms south, are 65kms wide and over a kilometre and a half deep. ‘Deep’ as in salt minerals; the surface water is only about 3 feet deep. (Note 2) The attraction here is the three species of flamingos, the Chilean, the Andean and the James’.

From there we went up into the mountains (see map), to those charming lakes of Miscanti and Miniques. It freezes hard up here in the winter but we were lucky with some sun, before a shower of rain. (Note 3)

We drove back towards San Pedro de Atacama and stopped for a picnic lunch at the junction of an old Inca trail and the Tropic of Capricorn (Note 4). Just a line on a map, this latitude of the ‘Tropic of Capricorn’, but walking out down the dusty Inca trail, away from everyone else, lovely to let one’s mind imagine the traffic this path had experienced thousands of years ago; footprints, sandal impressions, the hoof  tracks of donkeys and llamas, but now simply dust.

The Tropic of Capricorn crossing an ancient Inca trail moving off northwards

Part Two to follow next week.

Richard 27th January 2023

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS As an aside, some of you will have read my postcards from our trip to the north of South Island New Zealand in 2020 (PCs 169 and 170), when I wanted to visit the sand spit where, in August 1877, a seventeen year old girl, who later became my great grandmother, was shipwrecked and rescued some days later. I needed a travel agent with very local knowledge of the area, so went onto Google Earth, zoomed into the town of Nelson and located a travel agent on Trafalgar Street, World Travellers. Then it was a simple task to ask by email whether they could do the international stuff in addition to the local detail. The result was absolutely perfect.

Note 1 Chile is the most prominent example of an elongated type of territorial morphology; other examples include Norway and Vietnam.

Note 2 Compare with the Pantanal, (see PC 17 and 20 2014) the world’s biggest wetland, some 800kms north to south, 500kms east to west, with a height difference of some one metre over its whole length. The Pantanal lies east over The Andes from The Atacama, straddling the borders of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Oddly they are at about the same latitude, one of the driest places on earth and one of the wettest; separated by the great mountain range of the Andes!

Note 3.Despite it being summer in the southern hemisphere, the months of January and February mark the Altiplanic winter here, with occasional heavy rain storms. Bizarre huh?

Note 4 Simon Reeve, a British author and travel documentary maker, made a fascinating journey along the Tropic of Cancer and along the Tropic of Capricorn. Among his other programmes is one entitled The Americas; the part about Chile is intriguing.